Opinion Carry on chief ministers
The damage that can be done by a tired,comatose government in two years is too horrific to think about but do not despair.
In this time of stupefying political stagnation at the highest levels of the Government of India,good news is hard to come by. Good news is only possible when governments show that they are capable of firm economic and political decisions. And,there is not the smallest sign that the Sonia-Manmohan government plans to do anything other than continue stagnating till the next general election. Please do not allow Agni V to fool you into believing that there are signs of renewal that are suddenly going to manifest themselves. The results of the last round of state elections were so stunningly bad for Congress that there is not a murmur of revival in the hot summer air.
On the economic front,where there is the most urgent need for change,the Prime Ministers Chief Economic Advisor confirmed in Washington last week that there will be no reforms before 2014. The damage that can be done by a tired,comatose government in two years is too horrific to think about but do not despair. There are signs of good news from the states.
You would have noticed them if you read between the lines of the statements that were made when the Prime Minister called chief ministers to Delhi to discuss national security matters recently. They spoke out aggressively,and on national television,against interference in their affairs. At least those who do not belong to the Congress Party did. Those who belong to the Congress Party are not allowed to open their mouths without permission from the high command so we can expect little from them. But,the Congress Party now rules only a handful of states so it does not matter. What does matter is for chief ministers like Narendra Modi,J Jayalalithaa,Nitish Kumar,Naveen Patnaik and perhaps even Mamata Banerjee to wake up to how they could become the engine that takes India forward despite the inertia in Delhi.
So far they have only rebelled against the Home Ministers attempts to set up a new counter-terrorism centre without consulting them. And,they were right to do so but they now need to become more vocal about other things like having centrally controlled welfare programmes rammed down their throats. I have met chief ministers who admit privately that they are often forced to sacrifice excellent welfare programmes of their own for the sake of national welfare programmes like MNREGA.
This is wrong because I can confirm from my own field research that the welfare programmes that work best are the ones that are locally controlled. I have said it before and I will say it again that if we are seriously interested in ensuring that not another child grows up malnourished in India,the solution lies in giving village women control of food programmes. This is something that more enlightened chief ministers should start doing forthwith which brings us back to what chief ministers can do to become Indias engine of growth.
They must demand more control over their resources. The sight of chief ministers lining up outside the Planning Commission to beg for development funds is an ugly one. Some Indian states are bigger than countries and they would develop and grow much faster if they had more control over their economies. Many distortions crept into Centre-State relations in those bad old days when the Congress Party controlled nearly all of our major state governments. These distortions need to be removed and should be quite easy to remove now that we see non-Congress chief ministers making common cause on matters of national security.
Once state governments start competing with each other to become popular tourist destinations,favorites for foreign investment and centres of excellence in rural development,education,healthcare,sanitation and infrastructure building,India will finally begin to really change.
If this starts to happen soon,then the deleterious consequences of having a stagnant government in Delhi and a Prime Minister who seems to be in a somnambulant state will be mitigated. At the moment,despite the spectacular success of Agni V,we are in the hands of so weak a government that not a day seems to go by without someone giving it a slap or two. In recent months,we have seen the Supreme Court,the Army Chief and a supposedly faceless bureaucrat like the Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) interfere publicly in matters of policy.
When judges decide what our telecommunications policy should be and when the CAG decides whether Air India should be refinanced or abandoned to its fate. And,when the Army Chief tells us his soldiers cannot win a war because they have neither ammunition nor modern weapons,it starts to feel as if we do not have an elected government at all. The chief ministers have at least a mandate to rule and real administrative experience.
Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ Tavleen_Singh
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